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Satan gives Adam an apple, and takes away paradise. Therefore in all temptations let us consider not what he offers, but what we shall lose.
Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in whom our strength lies.
The Bruised Reed
God is forced to mortify sins by afflictions, because we mortify them not by the Spirit.
We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.
usually he empties such of themselves, and makes them nothing, before he will use them in any great services.The Bruised Reed (3)
He can be no true friend to thee that is a friend to thy faults, and thou canst be no friend to thyself if thou be an enemy to him that tells thee of thy faults. Wilt thou like him the worse that would have thee be better?
True friendship and acquaintance stands not in bare words and complemental visits, but in real communication of offices and benefits. So here, converse and acquaintance with God stands in our improving God and our interest in Him, so as to acquaint Him with all our secrets, so as to impart unto Him all our griefs and fears, so as to rely upon Him to guide us in all our ways and to supply all our wants. This [very thing] God looks we should do and takes it unkindly when we do otherwise, as a true friend that is willing and able to help his friend takes it unkindly if he go to any other, thinks himself either distrusted or slighted, and it is almost a matter of falling out between them.
True friendship will value a great advantage of another's before a small one of our own.
A true friend is not born every day. It is best to be courteous to all; entire with few. So may we, perhaps, have less cause of joy—I am sure, less occasion of sorrow.
Man is made to be a friend, and apt for friendly offices. He that is not friendly is not worthy to have a friend; and he that has a friend and does not show himself friendly is not worthy to be accounted a man. Friendship is a kind of life, without which there is no comfort of a man's life. Christian friendship ties such a knot that great Alexander cannot cut. Summer friends I value not, but winter friends are worth their weight in gold.
A sincere Christian prays his friends to search him, and he prays soul-searching ministers to search him; but, above all, he begs hard of God to search him: "Search me, O God."
A true friend is neither known in prosperity nor hid in adversity.
Friendship must be cemented by piety. A wicked man can be no true friend.
How often have I found that human friendship is a sweet addition to our woe, a beloved calamity, an affliction which nature will not be without! Not because nature loves evil nor is wholly deceived in its choice, for there is good in friendship and delight in holy love, but because the good which is here accompanied with so much evil is the beginning of a more high and durable friendship and points us to the blessed society and converse which we shall have with Christ in the heavenly Jerusalem.
There is gold in ore which God and His Spirit in us can distinguish. A carnal man's heart is like a dungeon wherein is nothing to be seen but horror and confusion. This light makes us judicious and humble upon clearer sight of God's purity and our own uncleanness and makes us able to discern the work of the Spirit in another.
In melancholy distempers, especially when there is guilt on the soul, we can find no comfort in wife, children, friends, estate, etc. It is a pitiful state when body, soul, and conscience all are distempered, but even now let a Christian look to God's nature and promises. Though he cannot live by sight, yet let him live much by faith.
If men can find no comfort and yet set themselves to teach and encourage weaker Christians, by way of reflection they receive frequently great comfort themselves. So doth God reward this duty of mutual discourse; that those things we did not so fully understand before by discourse we come to know and relish far better. This should teach us to love and often engage in holy conference, for besides the good we do to others, we shall be profited ourselves. Divine Meditations
Certainly when we undervalue mercy, especially so great a one as the communion of saints is, commonly the Lord takes it away from us till we learn to prize it to the full value. Consider well therefore the heinousness of this sin, which that you may the better conceive. First, consider it is against God's express precept, charging us not to forsake the assemblies of the saints (Heb. 10:20, 25). Again, it is against our own greatest good and spiritual solace, for by discommunicating and excommunicating ourselves from that blessed society, we deprive ourselves of the benefit of their holy conference, their godly instructions, their divine consolations, brotherly admonitions, and charitable reprehensions, and what an inestimable loss is this? Neither can we partake such profit by their prayers as otherwise we might, for as the soul in the natural body conveys life and strength to every member, as they are compacted and joined together and not as dissevered, so Christ conveys spiritual life and vigor to Christians, not as they are disjoined from but as they are united to the mystical body, the church.
The church of Christ is a common hospital wherein all are in some measure sick of some spiritual disease or other, that we should all have ground of exercising mutually the spirit of wisdom and meekness.
Let us not look so much who are our enemies as who is our Judge and Captain, nor what they threaten but what He promises; we have more for us than against us. What coward would not fight when he is sure of victory? None are here overcome but those that will not fight. Therefore, when any base fainting seizes upon us, let us lay the blame where it is to be laid.
We are weak, but we are His; we are deformed, but yet carry His image upon us. A father looks not so much at the blemishes of his child as at his own nature in him; so Christ finds matter of love from that which is His own in us. He sees His own nature in us. We are diseased, but yet His members. Whoever neglected his own members because they were sick or weak? None ever hated his own flesh. Can the head forget the members? Can Christ forget Himself? We are His fullness, as He is ours. Bruised Reed, 107
It is the greatest bondage in the world to have most freedom in ill.
We are now by the Spirit at liberty to delight in the law, to make the law our counsellor, to make the Word of God our counsellor. That which terrified and frightened us before is now our direction. A severe schoolmaster to a very young pupil becomes later, as the pupil grows, a wise tutor to guide and direct. So, the law that terrifies and whips us when we are in bondage, till we are in Christ -it scares us to Christ -that law afterward comes to be a tutor, to tell us what we shall do, to counsel us and say this is the best way. And we come to delight in those truths when they are revealed to us inwardly. And the more we know, the more we want to know, because we want to please God better every day.Glorious Freedom, 41
Every Christian who seeks to be a true one in deed and not name only must be a man of prayer.
Cast yourself into the arms of Christ, and if you perish, perish there. If you do not, you are sure to perish. If mercy is to be found anywhere, it is there.
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16. Thomas Manton (57)
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2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. John Calvin (107)
5. J.I. Packer (93)
6. John Piper (87)
7. George Swinnock (78)
8. John Flavel (74)
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11. Louis Berkhof (63)
12. Thomas Brooks (63)
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14. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
15. B.B. Warfield (58)
16. Thomas Manton (57)
17. R.C. Sproul (55)
18. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
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20. Gerald Bray (50)
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